You have known about academic disciplines ever since kindergarten, when the world is first divided into subjects like math, reading, writing, and art. As you progressed through elementary, middle, and high school, subjects multiplied and became narrower. In college, the boundaries between subjects became even starker. They were now majors, departments, and academic disciplines housed in different offices or buildings and with different requirements.
From the student perspective, different academic disciplines are about different things. If you go to a biology class you expect to learn about the functioning of organisms. If you go to an English class you expect to learn about literature and writing. If you go to an accounting class, you expect to learn about bookkeeping methods. But academic disciplines are defined by more than their content (the what). They encompass a methodology (the how), a context or literature (the why) and professional communities (the who and where).
Content: The What. Every academic discipline is defined in some manner by what it studies. In some cases, these are very broad categories (chemistry is about matter). In other cases, they are more narrow (economics is about markets and resources). More significantly, disciplinary fields are shaped by the type of questions scholars ask. Psychologists ask: what influences human behaviour? Historians ask: what caused this change over time?
Methods: The How. How do scholars answer the questions they ask? In the last section you explored different types of methodologies. Some disciplines favor one methodology. In biology and chemistry, research is experimental. In others, a range of methods are employed. Sociologists might use surveys, interviews, or archival research.
Context/Literature: The Why. Scholars don’t dream up questions out of the blue. They craft questions that build on what others have accomplished before them. They may apply an idea in a new situation or offer alternative interpretations or explanations. In this way scholars are engaged in conversation with one another. (And in some disciplines, like philosophy, those conversations may span hundreds or thousands of years.)
Communities: The Who and Where. There is another important aspect to academic disciplines: people and institutions. A discipline might include not only college faculty, like your professors, but also graduate students, industry researchers, independent scholars, and of course undergraduates like you. Discipline communities are carefully bounded: credentials are usually the ticket in. Most disciplinary communities are very hierarchical, both in visible ways (the authority conferred by a PhD, for example) and less visible ways (status might be determined by your university affiliation). This brings us to institutions. Academic disciplines are sustained by university and college departments, as well as journals, publishing houses, and professional associations. These institutions allow scholars to produce and exchange knowledge. While communities and institutions are essential to the functioning of academic disciplines, it’s important to realize they can function in discriminatory and exclusionary ways.
